On 6 September Will Noble appeared on the Robert Elms Show on Radio London, in a long and wide-ranging interview with Elms’s stand-in David Grant about Croydon. The conversation starts around 39 minutes 30 seconds into the show. Later that day Will also appeared on Times Radio talking about his book.
Croydonopolis receives an excellent review in the Spectator
In this week’s Spectator Helen Barrett review’s Will Noble’s Croydonopolis at length, praising a ‘gutsy, charming book’. ‘For all its debt, deprivation and concrete’, she concludes, ‘at its best Croydon was a dynamic, heroic place. In many ways it remains so . . . We need Croydon’s brio, its spirit of futurism, more than ever.’
Will Noble writes about Croydon for CNN Travel
Croydonopolis author Will Noble has just published a long piece on the CNN Travel website about the remarkable history of Croydon Airport - birthplace of continental passenger flights in the UK, and London’s first airport.
Inside Croydon reviews Croydonopolis
The Croydon news website Inside Croydon has reviewed Will Noble’s Croydonopolis at length, the reviewer David Morgan praising ‘a book that will be read and discussed in a variety of groups’ as ‘a quirky and entertaining read’ and recommending that it ‘become a standard for progressive sixth-form history and geography departments’.
Paul Wood sells out another Street Trees talk at Stanfords
On 29 September Paul Wood gave another sold-out talk at Stanfords in Covent Garden to celebrate the publication of the third edition of London’s Street Trees, and afterwards signed a goodly number of books.
IanVisits gives a great review to the new edition of London's Street Trees
IanVisits, the extremely popular London website, has just given the new edition of Paul Wood’s London’s Street Trees a long and admiring review, recommending it as a guide to ‘give you the background knowledge that there’s an interesting tree to seek out when wandering around an area’. Excellent timing, coming as Paul prepares for his sold-out talk on the book at Stanfords in Covent Garden tonight.
Croydonopolis author Will Noble has feature spread in the Telegraph
The Telegraph for 28 August featured a superb spread by Will Noble, whose Croydonopolis is published on 5 September, on why everything you think you know about Croydon is wrong.
Safe Haven and Hackney Council plant the first lemon tree in a London street
Among the planting party, Marcello of the Tree Musketeers is far left, next to him Hackney assistant tree officer Raffe Ross-Pearce, far right former Hackney councillor Vincent Stops, who over 20 years championed the borough’s street planting programme, in the foreground Hackney tree officer Marc Sanders, and behind him London’s Street Trees author Paul Wood.
To commemorate the critical and sales success of London’s Street Trees, Safe Haven’s Publisher, Graham Coster, decided to increase the already remarkable diversity of trees on the capital’s streets by contributing yet one more exotic species: a lemon tree. In consultation with the then chief arboricultural officer of Hackney Council, Rupert Bentley Walls, whose tree-planting initiative had seen the borough transformed into an amazing urban arboretum, a suitable specimen was duly purchased. And then the Covid pandemic intervened. Over two years went by with the lemon tree never leaving Italy. Belatedly, however, it has made it to the UK, and an ideally sheltered, south-facing, pedestrianised street in Shoreditch. Its planting was toasted by the participants with limoncello.
Graham Coster writes for County Cricket Matters
The latest issue of County Cricket Matters, published for the start of the 2024 season, includes a piece by The Nature of Cricket author and Safe Haven publisher Graham Coster on ‘Cricket at Northampton’.
Tessa Boase meets Jay Blades
While filming on Oxford Street recently for a Channel 5 documentary, Tessa Boase, author of London’s Lost Department Stores, met another of the programme’s participants, Jay Blades, of the BBC’s hugely popular Repair Shop.